Monday, November 19, 2018

Season 14 live blogging, Monday Nov 19th

Season 14 has started, and I am not following it too closely so far. There are 12 engines in division 4, most of them are new to TCEC. The division is a 4RR event, so 264 games. The games are short so I cannot view them all. The division has been restarted several times due to problems with the GPU-CPU server connection and with the 2-move openings. On top of everything the Carlsen-Caruana world championship is being played at the same time. To sum up, the division is long, not too interesting for me, and I have other interests right now. Division 3 will be more interesting, with new Leela starting its climb to the premier division.

We join the rofChade - chess22k game. This is round 7 of 44 in the division, according to their performance so far in the division I would say rofChade is the favorite.

move 10: The engines are following a popular line in the Gruenfeld defense. On move 9 rofChade took a lot of time to think, over 5 minutes, but played the popular move in the end - no surprise yet. According to Lichess there are several options for black on move 9, chess24 chose the third popular one. Evals are close to 0.

move 15: chess22k chose a less popular line on move 11, still in book. rofChade's eval increased to 0.46. There are only a few games left in the database on move 12, none on move 14. rofChade has a strong pawn line in the center, both engines look solid. chess22k has a pawn majority on the queen side. On move 14 it tried to attack the white center, rofChade did not exchange.

move 20: chess22k wants to exchange the DS bishops, rofChade has other plans. Evals are climbing over 0.7. chess22k moved a knight forward and back, can't be a good idea to give tempi like that. Now rofChade is thinking about exchanging bishops and chess22k avoids this. chess22k is not doing anything, does rofChade have an effective plan?

move 25: rofChade shifts to the queen side and pushes the a pawn. Its eval drops a little while chess22k's eval increases over 0.9, then drops back. The knights are exchanged, the bishops and rooks need more space to be effective. The engines open the a file, the center is still closed.

move 37: Evals are trending down, chess22k sees exchanges coming, perhaps the DS bishops will be gone after all. In a long PV agreement the engines start to exchange pieces, only QRB vs QRB remain. chess22k tried to exchange the remaining rooks but rofChade said no. Evals stay constant under 1.

move 45: rofChade has a central passer, I don't see how it can push forward. The engines are shuffling, this may take a while.

move 60: The shuffling continues, this will go to a 50 move draw unless the evals come down to 0. I hope rofChade does not blunder to avoid a draw.

move 70: The draw counter reset after rofChade pushed its passer the the 7th rank. rofChade's eval jumped to about 1, chess22k chose to let the passer queen and exchanged down to a Q vs RB ending. Was this a blunder?

move 80: Both engines are not using tablebases, however it seems that rofChade is winning according to the Stockfish commentary. The white pawns on the king side are starting to march, chess22k cannot stop them and its king is going to be in trouble soon.

move 90: Game over. chess22k was the one to blunder, it should have continued to shuffle.